Chapter 484

Chapter 484: Spawn.

The queen of Frostholm stayed silent for more than ten seconds. Her purple eyes were as clear and calm as gemstones, revealing nothing of her mood. The silence almost froze into suffocation before she finally nodded lightly and said: “Oh.”

Then she thought for a moment and asked: “So how is Frostholm now?”

Duncan looked into her eyes and spoke in a calm tone: “Tyrian is the new governor. The Sea Mist Fleet is fully taking over the city-state. The remaining Frostholm navy will be reorganized and rebuilt.”

Ray Nora showed a slight smile: “Ah, Tyrian. One of the possibilities… Fate is really hard to pin down. This result is not bad. What do you think?”

Duncan did not answer. He only went on calmly: “There is one more thing. The current head of the city-state Church follows my orders.”

Ray Nora finally showed a slightly surprised look. She tilted her head a little: “Hm? It sounds like… you are now the real master of Frostholm?”

“I have no interest in ruling a city-state—but you can think of it that way.”

“Now I am even more curious about what actually happened to make Frostholm’s situation turn out like this,” Ray Nora said, her expression growing serious. “I arranged many things, but your appearance was outside all my plans. You mentioned a disaster, but in my estimates, even if It entered a certain degree of runaway state, the situation should not have become as bad as you said…”

“A vast army of replicas from The Deep Sea invaded Frostholm. A mirror world city-state almost rose up into the Mortal Realm,” Duncan said in a low voice. “While you were trying to calm that tentacle in The Deep Sea, a group of cultists sensed the power leaking from It—and Frostholm’s ongoing mining of the Boiling Gold shaft, in a way, ‘helped’ those heretics.”

Duncan did not hide anything after that. He told the former queen of Frostholm everything that had happened there, including the changes brought by his own interference.

Ray Nora did not interrupt from start to finish. She listened quietly until Duncan’s words ended. Only then did she let out a long breath, a complicated smile appearing on her face: “Compared to the Elder Gods in The Deep Sea, it really is the mad humans who are more frightening.”

Then she paused and sighed in relief: “Still, in the worst path, we got an ending that is not too terrible—most people lived. That is enough.”

“Even if, in the end, the city-state became the property of a ‘Subspace shadow’ like me?” Duncan asked on purpose.

Ray Nora only smiled. Then she looked very seriously into Duncan’s eyes and said: “Then you must be the strongest guardian Frostholm has ever had.”

“Your attitude toward me is different from others,” Duncan said with some feeling. “Since I regained my humanity, I have met many people. Most of them were startled and jumpy. Few could stay calm when meeting me for the first time, let alone show such an optimistic attitude like you.”

Ray Nora shook her head: “This is not optimism. It is fact. You regained your humanity and helped Frostholm. That naturally makes you the strongest guardian of this city-state. I know most people feel instinctive fear about this, but I have embraced fear for too long. I am used to looking through fear to see the true face of things.”

“…Now it is my turn to ask questions.” After hearing the queen of Frostholm’s words, Duncan stayed silent for two or three seconds. Then he chose his words and spoke: “The replicant of the Abyssal Lord… when exactly did it invade the Mortal Realm? And will a similar ‘invasion’ happen again?”

“I am sorry. I cannot give a clear answer to the first question,” Ray Nora said, a hint of apology on her face. “When I first noticed Its existence, It was already in The Deep Sea. And in the first few contacts, I only heard one voice… It said It was a faulty replicant. It said It needed to terminate its operation.”

“Contact?” Duncan caught that word at once. “How did you ‘contact’ It at the beginning? And from what you are saying… this replicant told you about itself on Its own, and even asked you for help?”

Ray Nora nodded lightly: “I do not know if you have heard this, but I am a natural Psionic?”

“…I have indeed heard such rumors. They say you can know all things, past and present.”

“Rumors exaggerate many things. I can neither foresee the future nor see through all things. But there is one thing they did not get wrong. A natural Psionic really can perform a Listening rite to hear ‘voices’ beyond the reach of ordinary people,” Ray Nora said, as if lost in memories, thinking as she spoke slowly. “When I was very, very young, I often heard whispers from unknown sources, or saw strange and bizarre scenes in my sleep. Like most born Psionics, these terrible ‘illnesses’ were very dangerous. They even threatened the people taking care of me several times—

“Can you imagine it? You are caring for a two- or three-year-old child, and while the child is only dreaming in sleep, deadly shrieks suddenly fill the room, and swelling, writhing shadows appear… After my parents realized that the frequent horrors at home all came from the youngest child, they had no choice but to send me into the Cathedral. Like other born Psionics, I was put under the care of… ‘professionals.’

“I grew up in the deepest cellar of the great Cathedral until I was twelve. Fully armed Silent Monks and ascetics were my babysitters. Special shackles and a collar were my toys. A divinely blessed iron cage was my bed. The Gatekeeper came to check on me three times a week to make sure my mind still stayed on the side of humans. Only on my twelfth birthday, when my spirit and will had grown stronger and my awareness had become clear, did the Archbishop decide that I had stabilized on the ‘human’ side. Then they gave me divine blessing and Baptism, and announced to the outside world that I was a human.

“After that, I went through strict training to adapt to and control my gift, and to learn how to live in peace with my ‘nightmares.’ In four years, I gradually understood that my ‘dreams’ were actually a kind of resonance with the world. The whispers and shapes in my dreams came from beings that drifted outside the borders of the Mortal Realm and tried to make contact with our world. Once they were sure my mind could bear it, my Mentors taught me special methods to perform the Listening rite on those voices while keeping myself intact…

“And in that process, my ‘senses’ started to be drawn again and again toward The Deep Sea. I began to notice… Its existence.

“Or rather, It began to notice my existence.

“Every born Psionic has their own resonance tendency. Some tend to hear voices from history. Most of them become outstanding archaeologists and hidden scholars. Some tend to hear the voices of the Four Gods. As long as they live to adulthood, they are almost destined to become the Saint. Others are less fortunate. They resonate with Subspace. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of them never leave the Cathedral cellar alive. The few who do become extremely rare Keepers of Secrets or hidden Saints, kept by the Church.

“And I formed a resonance with an Elder God that had awakened in The Deep Sea.”

Ray Nora stopped. Her gaze turned toward the far end of the room, toward that dark, chaotic, broken space. Under her gaze, the darkness stirred. The chaotic lights and shadows of Subspace faded away. Endless floating islands in The Deep Sea, and that silent “pillar,” showed themselves in the depths of the darkness.

That was her resonance. It was her nightmare, her fear, and her duty. It was both the beginning and the end.

“In fact, most of the time, I could not hear clearly what ‘It’ was saying at all. At first I thought it was because my own power was too weak, and I did not control Psychic Resonance well enough. But as time passed, I found that the reason was actually within this ‘Elder God’ itself.

“It was not whole. It was only a ‘replica’ copied by mistake from a greater being. It woke up in this dark Deep Sea knowing nothing. In Its broken and chaotic thoughts, only one idea filled everything—error. Immediate termination.

“It repeated that thought in my mind thousands, tens of thousands of times.”

Duncan finally spoke softly: “So you started the Abyssal Trench Project?”

“No. I first became the queen of Frostholm,” Ray Nora said calmly. “That took some work. Only by controlling the whole city-state could I have more ways to investigate and confirm what I ‘heard.’ In that process, I discovered the anomaly deep in the Boiling Gold mine, and the link between all this and ‘The Deep Sea.’ The Abyssal Trench Project was the final result. I did a lot of preparation for that final result.”

Duncan did not speak for a moment. He rose slowly from his chair and walked to the far end of the room. He stared thoughtfully at the “view” of The Deep Sea that had appeared in the darkness, and at the tentacle, like a sky-piercing pillar, that ran through Frostholm’s “blueprint.”

After a long time, he turned his head slightly: “So It had no malice?”

“No malice and no kindness,” Ray Nora said. “In fact, It did not even have anything that could be called ‘intellect’—only a small fragment of broken, chaotic thought that ran through a simple judgment. It could not even understand Its own existence. So of course there was no such thing as an ‘attitude’ toward those tiny, fragile beings on the sea surface…

“It simply existed, in pain and in confusion, in this cold darkness. Yet such a simple ‘existence’ was enough to overturn our delicate and fragile so-called ‘civilized world.’”

Duncan muttered softly: “Existence itself is a threat…”

Ray Nora’s voice came from behind him a moment later: “Now I can answer your second question.

“Whether a similar ‘invasion’ will happen again—I think… it is possible. It is even certain.”

Duncan turned back at once: “Why?”

“Because it was not an ‘invasion’ at all. The Abyssal Lord did not ‘enter’ our Mortal Realm from Its own domain—It does not need to do that.

“Its ‘components’ naturally exist in the Mortal Realm. They are in every stretch of The Deep Sea, in every city-state, even in every human body. What happened in Frostholm’s Deep Sea was not an ‘invasion,’ but a… ‘awakening.’”

Ray Nora slowly spread her hands. A strange calm lay on her face. She fixed her gaze on Duncan’s eyes and spoke the greatest truth she had learned in her half century of nightmare sleep—

“Captain Duncan, in a certain sense, all of us, even the city-state under our feet, are the Elder Gods’ spawn.”